


Foundling/Ragdoll

by tabaqui



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 14:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabaqui/pseuds/tabaqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-everything AU apocalypse ficlets, inspired by the amazing <a href="http://fandomvideos.livejournal.com/62453.html">Counting Bodies</a> vid, by Milly.   Originally posted in March and November of 2005.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Foundling/Ragdoll

'Foundling'

It took a while to figure out who the kid was. Dirty-blond hair streaked with mud and blood - dirty face streaked with tears. Running screaming into the remains of the Wolfram and Hart building one night while Spike was there, trying to glean something useful from the ruins.

Hitting him - biting him - inarticulate words and Spike had finally just knocked him unconscious. Dragged him back to the lair he and Blue were sharing, in the smoking pit that was L.A. Didn't eat him, 'cause he smelled like belladonna and rue and _Angel_ , and Spike spent the rest of the night crouched over his twitching, fever-wracked body. Just breathing.

Three days and the kid was well enough to talk, and he haltingly told a story of kidnap and betrayal - other dimensions and fathers who were not. Of pain and rage - magic and murder and madness. Blue chiming in now and again with her stilted observances; gleaning bits of the past from the scattered puzzle-pieces that were all that was left of Fred. His name was Connor - he was Angel's son.

 

After he was well enough to walk, he didn't. He collected blankets and scraps and made a nest in one corner - took to following Spike when Spike went out to hunt. Spike was done with animal blood - done with being a champion or the shadow of one. Done with it all, as surely as the Powers were done with this dimension. This Earth.

Connor was a good hunting partner. Human enough to attract demons, demon enough to survive them. And he could attract _humans_ , too - play the wounded cub and draw them out with his poisoned-sugar smile. Then Spike could pounce, and feast. Connor would watch him - would loot the corpse and burn it, silent.

He didn't talk much in bed, either, but he parted his thighs to Spike's knee and offered his throat - dug his nails into Spike's back and his teeth into Spike's shoulder. He was a lithe and needle-fanged cat, and so pretty when he bared his teeth. Spike fucked him into screams and bit him until he swooned. Afterwards he would be lazily talkative and tell Spike about his 'real' life and his 'pretend' life. He never seemed to settle on which was which, and Spike never bothered to untangle the skein.

 

L.A. got worse, in time, and one night they loaded up a couple of packs and struck out across the smoking, pock-marked plain, heading for Portland or maybe Denver. Watching Illyria do her clock-work stalk, watching Connor pick his way through the cracked streets like a deer; all wide eyes and sudden lift of the head - frozen stillness and then movement as he tracked and dismissed the noises from the shadows. Pale, bruised arms under an old flannel he'd ripped the sleeves out of - worn-out blue jeans and sneakers - ring of bite-marks around his neck and the look of being always just over the edge, in one way or another. Spike wore his demon-face and nothing came near them, and near Carmel they found a Humvee that had the keys in it.

The roads weren't so bad further north - Connor slept curled in the back or he sat next to Spike, silent, watching the scenery and stroking Spike's thigh. Illyria abandoned them in Seattle, claming she was going to find a way back to the Well. Spike didn't care - he just wanted to go - to move - and not look back. Not for a long time. Connor - who still smelled of Angel but now always of blood and smoke as well - held him while he slept, and mostly kept the dreams away.

 

'Ragdoll'

Connor's coming apart at the seams and he's not sure how he feels about that. He's like that doll in that movie, the one about Christmas and skeletons and somehow that’s gotten mixed up in his head so he remembers trimming the tree with little clicking finger bones and making wreaths out of ribs and dead ivy, fighting with his sister for the last cut-out cookie.

But he doesn't _have_ a sister, does he? He's not the oldest son in a family of three, almost-sophomore in college and secret superhero. He's the _anti_ hero, he's the boy that saw the rot under the smile and hugged her to him anyway. Wiggling little worms against his cheek and he had to scrub for hours, after, to get the stink off.

He runs his fingers over his ribs - over his elbows and hips and collarbones, feeling for the seams. Picking at the joins until Spike rolls over and grabs his hands - pins them to the stained ticking of the mattress.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"Coming undone," Connor says, working his fingers in Spike's numbing grip, uncomfortable _tight_ feeling of skin and dried blood under his nails. He's _not_ that boy that liked those dead bones so much it was a family tradition, vampires before breakfast. He's the boy that was born to be wild - born to kill, born to _die_ \- prophesized like Jesus Christ and Muhammad and all the rest only _his_ legacy won't ever be an American Movie Classic. It holds no forgiveness, just dumb martyrdom in the bombed out remains of a Comfort Inn.

"You're no fucking martyr," Spike mutters, lips and tongue moving over the little beads and furrows of blood on Connor's skin. Cutting heat of ivory fangs and Spike slices him into bits and bobs, quarters and halves, rags and tags. Only to stitch him up again with his needle tongue. 

"Beautiful boy, fucking headcase. Doesn't work that way, you don't get to pick out the parts you don't like and sew in clockwork," Spike says. At least, Connor _thinks_ that's what Spike is saying. Spike's _always_ saying something and he's learned to pick out the pits and leave the plums since they walked out of L A.

 _'No, that's not right... I am the bastard child of the incestuous dead. Split apart and patched back up. Lived three lives and I don't want any of them.'_

"Want this one," Connor says, eyes closed to the furious dawn, thighs open and his belly is empty. Everywhere else is full. _'Straw, dead leaves, rags, old hair...'_

"Shut up, dolly," Spike says, and sews up Connor's lips with bone needles and gut.


End file.
